Jim Bainbridge’s ‘Above the Sea: Expat in China’

When Jim Bainbridge, a specialist in International Technical Communications
and Training living in the Pacific Northwest, was offered
a position in the Shanghai office of a large international
firm, he jumped at the chance. Although he had been to China
several times before and is married to a native of Guangzhou,
this was his first opportunity for an extended residency in
the PRC.

During his year and a half in Shanghai, Jim wrote a regular “newsletter”
to family and friends based on his experiences in China. So
informative and insightful are these installments that they
have recently been collected together into a book titled Above
the Sea: Expat in China.

Jim’s account is set apart from others in the “I Lived in China”
category in that it avoids the extremes we often find in these
works.

First, his experience is not so rare and extraordinary as to seem beyond
the reach of you and me. That is, we can’t all be among the first
Westerners to ride the Chinese rails after the re-opening of China, as Paul
Theroux wrote about in Riding the Iron Rooster, nor can we all
study ancient martial arts with a humble master in China, as you’ve
certainly read about in Mark Salzman’s Iron and Silk.

But Above the Sea: Expat in China also isn’t the culture-shocked
account of someone starting from ground zero in China.

Instead, drawing on his many years of independent study of
Chinese history and culture, as well as the experiences of
his prior visits, Jim is able to present an insightful picture
of the changes taking place in modern China and provide some
thought-provoking commentary for the rest of us who fancy
ourselves students of that nation. His observations on the
improvements that the Chinese government has brought to its
people are especially worth noting. He writes on page 24:

“The terms `Communist’ and `Communist Party’ provoke
strong feelings in most Americans - feelings so strong that
many are unwilling to credit the government of China with
any altruistic motives in instituting and carrying through
the reforms that have turned the Chinese economy into the
third-largest in the world, while raising the standard of
living of more people than at any time in history. If the
government of any other country, governed by a party with
any other name, were to improve that country’s economy
by even a small fraction, that government would be lauded
as having the best interests of its citizens in mind. Many
Americans, however, characterize the economic reforms in
China as being merely the frantic attempts of geriatric
Communists to retain their power….

“However, if power were all that the Communist Party had in mind,
one would logically anticipate that reform would be the
last tactic that the leadership would adopt. Secret police,
repression and isolation from the rest of the world would
be more expected.

“Instead, we see a gradual loosening of central power, an explosion
of entrepreneurial spirit, and great strides in bringing
China’s trading system in line with international
laws and practices….”

But the book is far from being all about politics. In short, Jim’s work
succeeds on many levels: It provides an account of the modernizations
already firmly in place in China; it offers a number of travel
tips to interesting locations I’ve never heard of, despite
plenty of my own prior travel in the PRC; and it gives us
several small history lessons: did you know that Beijing’s
Summer Palace was vandalized not once, but twice by foreign
troops, once during the second Opium War of 1860 and again
in 1900 during the so-called “Boxer Rebellion”,
and that Chinese artifacts now sitting in several Western
museums came from these lootings?

Above the Sea: Expat in China also shows us that China’s economy
is not immune from the forces of the free market. Unfortunately,
before his planned two years in Shanghai were completed, Jim’s
company “reorganized”, laying off many in his
office and forcing him to return to the United States with
a pink slip in hand. (This of course does mean that his book
is available to us earlier than it would have been otherwise….)